Malware, such as computer viruses, worms and Trojan horses, is a serious threat to both business and personal computing. Various software vendors provide anti-malware products, which can detect, block and/or remove malware on a user's computer. Anti-malware products use various techniques to protect users from malware, such as, but not limited to, intrusion prevention, web browser defense, signature based detection, heuristic based detection and behavior based detection. When an anti-malware product detects a specific instantiation of malware, the anti-malware product can make a copy of the detected malware and analyze it, to learn more about both how it works and how to identify and disarm similar threats in the future. Additionally, users sometimes proactively submit suspect files to anti-malware vendors (e.g., over the Internet) to have them checked for malware.
Malicious parties that write malware have taken to testing new malware against commercial anti-malware products with large foot prints in the security market. This way, before releasing a new malware variant, the originator of the malware can determine whether a given, well established commercial anti-malware product can detect it. If the new malware can be detected, the malware originator often continues to modify it until it cannot be detected, before releasing it. Malware originators test their new malware against commercial anti-malware products either by directly submitting an infected file to a vendor for testing, or by running the anti-malware product on a hard disk or the like containing an infected file. There is currently no way for vendors of anti-malware products to identify these individuals, or to stop them from engaging in this type of behavior. It would be desirable to address these issues.